February 23, 2025 • 49 mins
Discover the brutal truths of the transatlantic slave trade and the enduring scars it left on generations with our esteemed guest, Dr. Harry Singleton. Through gripping narratives, we examine how slaveholders strategically dismantled family bonds and social cohesion to suppress unity among enslaved people. From the bustling auction blocks of Charleston and New Orleans to the oppressive grip of slave codes, each story is a haunting reminder of the systemic dehumanization faced by African slaves.
We also delve into the harrowing practice of flogging, rooted in misinterpreted biblical scriptures, and the relentless sexual exploitation and labor demands imposed on enslaved women. These narratives highlight the grim realities of life under slavery, where resistance could mean brutal punishment, and submission was a path to survival. The oppressive systems designed to capture runaway slaves further emphasize the harsh environment in which African Americans struggled for freedom.
But amidst this darkness, a narrative of hope emerges. Listen as we celebrate the power of education as a tool for liberation, with figures like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs leading the charge. Dr. Singleton also casts light on how Africans redefined Christianity, creating empowering theologies that inspired resilience and hope. Join us as we navigate these complex histories, shedding light on the legacy of slavery and the ongoing pursuit of justice and equality.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Good evening everyone .
Welcome to segment two of thepodcast, native Drums.
I am Dr Harry Singleton.
I'll be with you again tonight.
If you can recall, the lastsegment ended with the shipment
of African barter to the newAmericas, both the United States
America and to the Caribbeanand South America.
(00:36):
Tonight we take a closer lookat the process by which they
went, from the holes of ships tothe plantations in which they
find themselves, and this is whyI titled this particular
lecture A Strange and HostileLand.
Of course, for those of you whoare familiar with the 137th
Psalm, they asked, of course,the children of Israel in
(01:00):
Babylonian captivity to sing usthe joyous songs of Zion, and of
course they responded how canwe sing the Lord'sous songs of
Zion?
And of course, they respondedhow can we sing the Lord songs
in a strange and hostile land?
And so because of that, I havetitled this lecture a strange
and hostile land.
After being broken in by slavebreakers in the West Indies,
(01:26):
slaves were then shipped to theSouth Americas, the Caribbean
and, of course, to what we nowknow today as the United States
of America and, of course, theMiddle Passages.
First stop was the West Indies,because it was a central
location for creating slaves anddistributing them to other
(01:47):
parts of the Western hemisphere.
Slaves were also sent to Brazilthey're more there than any
other continent, many other, anyother country in the Western
hemisphere.
They were sent to Peru, theywere sent to Argentina, and they
were also sent to Mexico.
As it relates, though, to theUnited States of America, the
(02:12):
colonial precursor to the UnitedStates of America, slaves were
sent to three major auctioncities here, major auction
cities here, and of course,those three major auction cities
(02:32):
, richmond, virginia, newOrleans, louisiana and of course
, our very own Charleston, southCarolina.
In fact, charleston, southCarolina had the reputation for
having the best slaves of eitherRichmond or New Orleans.
Of course, charleston and NewOrleans are right on the water,
they're water cities, richmond alittle further inland, and
that's the distinction betweenthe two.
(02:53):
But of course it made moresense, logically, to have a
trading port for auction be at awater city like Charleston and
like New Orleans, and so we evensee slave traders in Virginia,
tennessee, kentucky, mississippicome to Charleston, south
(03:16):
Carolina, even though Richmondor New Orleans may have been
closer, namely because theso-called best slaves, in terms
of what you were looking for,you would find in Charleston,
south Carolina, and so slaveport still there.
Good visit to increase yourhistorical awareness of
(03:41):
Charleston and its role in theslave trade.
The market in which they wereauctioned still there as well.
Great trip to take to increaseyour intellectual awareness of
the slave trade.
As it relates to the auctionatmosphere, it was nothing short
of a carnival like atmospherehot dogs, coca-colas, popcorn,
(04:06):
cotton candy.
It was like a fair and theslaveholders, kids, look forward
to going to auctions.
They look forward to going toCharleston, look forward to
going to New Orleans, lookforward to going to Richmond to
enjoy themselves, while theirfathers, of course, purchased
slaves to bring back to theirfathers, of course, purchased
slaves to bring back to theirplantation.
And, of course, during theauction process, slaves are
(04:31):
brought on auction stage one byone and they were sold to the
highest bidder, not unlikeanything you've seen in a
reenactment movie like Roots or12 Years a Slave.
Reenactment movie like Roots or12 Years a Slave.
From a strategic standpoint, itis important to know that
families were broken up bydesign.
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Whenever they discovered thatthere were siblings on a
particular voyage brought toauction, they made sure that
those siblings did not go to thesame plantation.
They were broken up by designto destroy a sense of social
cohesion among the slaves and,of course, to inspire other
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slaves in a joint effort toinsurrection.
And so one of the issues thatwe deal with today is still
dealing with broken families inthe black community, namely
because of the hundreds of yearsin which the family was
intentionally targeted by theslave holding community in order
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to create this unity and tocreate, did and to diminish
social cohesion.
Slaves that were not purchasedwere considered refuse slaves or
refuse slaves, and they weresubject to something that was
probably even more demeaningthey were subject to what is
referred to as a scramble sale,and that is, on the last day of
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the auction the slaveholderswould be given a booklet, and
these are very, very elaboratebooklets, kind of like what you
would see when you go to acommencement, when you see
parchment paper, resume, likepaper.
That is the paper that they useto list the slaves and to list
what their attributes wererelative to their contribution
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to plantation life.
Relative to their contributionto plantation life, and so,
generally, if you were notselected as a slave, there was
probably some deformity with theslave, there were probably some
impending health problems.
There are probably somemobility problems.
There are probably some earlyhealth problems or physical
problems as to why they were notselected.
(06:42):
But on the last day of theauction they would just open the
doors of the slave auction siteand slave holders would walk in
and just select slaves and theycould get them for free on
scramble sale day or last day,which was particularly demeaning
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on that day, not for not justfor the slaves who got selected,
but also for the slaves who didnot get selected.
They were.
If they were not purchased, theywere left to die on the wharf.
As we now know today it'sGadsden's Wharf where the
International African AmericanMuseum is located, but they were
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left to die on the wharf.
Now, on the one hand, you maysay well, you know, this is a
strange turn of fortunate events, in a sense that they were not
selected, but on the other hand,they were in a foreign land
that they were not from, inwhich they were not familiar.
They were in a hostile landthat, of course, was hostile to
the achievement of blackaspiration and of course they
were already branded in the lifeof the religious community as
demonic because they had darkskin.
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And so you have no change ofclothes and you have no food,
you don't know anyone and youwere not selected to go to a
plantation.
And so many people, many ofthem, were left to die on the
wharf and that's exactly whathappened to them.
Only a few of them were able toscrounge out some type of
meager life, going forward anddo odd jobs for people downtown,
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but that was a hostileproposition in and of itself to
see somebody black walkingaround downtown that did not
belong to an owner and did nothave any past papers to come
into town.
Until we start seeing theinfusion of free blacks who came
to America much later and werenever slaves.
(08:39):
But at this point in the slavetrade, this is a very, very
dicey reality for those slaves,that many of whom subject to a
scramble sale and left to die onthe wharf.
As it relates to plantation lifeitself, once on the plantation,
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slaves were immediately numberone, branded with estate marks.
Now this is their second mark.
If you can recall, the firstbrand was with the ship company,
so that the ship company couldget credit for that particular
slave, and then they werebranded again with estate marks,
many of many, of many, of whomwere branded on the outside of
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their lower legs.
Some were even branded on theirchest and on their arms and of
course they were very painful inthe process of branding.
And of course this is raised acontemporary discussion relative
to Greek letter organizationsmy fellow Greek brothers and
sisters out there relative tothe significance of the brand,
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the requirement of the brand inyesteryear, that this was a
throwback to slavery, and thatit has been sharply criticized
by progressive thinking blackleaders that we should not be
doing this to each other orrequiring it as admission into a
Greek letter organization.
And so the brand has come upagain in contemporary
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conversation relative to anotherwise enhancing process of
becoming a member of a Greekletter organization, to still
live in the world of brands.
And of course, the second thingthat happened once they got to
plantations was that they weregiven European names and of
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course this would become a bigissue as we move forward and
develop organizations,particularly black or
nationalist organizations likethe Nation of Islam.
Well, of course, the leadership, namely Elijah Muhammad,
maintained that we must changeour names because the names that
we have were the names given tous by our slave master and he
would.
It was given to us because itwas his name and so our surnames
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like mine, of course, beingSingleton um was a name that was
given to denote ownership ofyou, and of course, it's one of
the first things you do as ahuman being.
When you own something, youname it.
When we get a cat or dog andbring it home as a pet, one of
the first things we do is nameit, and so naming is very
significant in cultural identity, which is why an organization
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like the Nation of Islam usesthe X, where you abandon that
slave name and you adopt the X,as we saw with Malcolm X, and X
means origin unknown, meaningthat you don't know your name,
that the only name you do knowbecause of the way Africa has
been pillaged culturally, thatthe only name you do know is the
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name that your slave mastergave you and you don't know your
original name in West Africa,and so they were immediately
branded with a state marks andthey were given European names.
Slave quarters that were builtfor them on plantations often
lacked the floor and often likeheat.
(11:59):
Generally, they had to create afire outside and get as warm as
they could and bring some coalsin and try to use them to keep
them warm, particularly inwinter nights in Virginia and
North Carolina and MarilynFrederick Douglass talked about
those cold winter nights when hewas a slave and most of the
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time they lacked the floor andheat, which was very, very
inhumane.
But that's what the intent was.
The intent was to impose aninhumane context on African
slaves at every turn in coloniallife, and we'll look at that
more closely, colonial life andwe'll look at that more closely
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in just a second.
Food and clothes rationed perslave usually consisted number
one, of four changes of clothesper year.
So for those of you who havefour closets full of clothes now
, you know your ancestors hadfour changes of clothes per year
and so, and sometimes with someslave masters, it was to a
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winter outfit and a summeroutfit with a jacket and boots
and, of course, to sometimes onemeal a day, mostly with no meat
of course, namely because theywanted to get as much labor out
of slaves on a daily basis asthey could and they felt that if
they fed slaves too much,particularly meat, that it would
test the slave to laziness andlack of industry.
And of course, which is one ofthe reasons why we pigged out on
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Sunday as often as we can,because we got Sunday off most
of the time, but we ate verylittle during the week, by
design so that we would not begiven over to so-called laziness
and so that the optimum amountof labor could be obtained from
us in a given day.
Labor was constant and merciless.
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Of course the historians havereferred to it as from can't see
to can't see, have referred toit as from can't see the can't
see, from can't see dawn tocan't see dusk, and a lot of
times, particularly during thecotton harvest, which was in
late August, early September,which is why slaves hated the
time of year, of labor day.
They would work 18 to even 20hours a day, only get four hours
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of rest and had to be back tobrain cotton to harvest and
sometimes pick 500 pounds ofcotton a day.
And of course this came out inthe movie 12 Years a Slave.
And you think about how light acotton ball is, think about how
much you have to pick and putin satchels to end up with 500
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pounds.
That's inhumane and mercilessin and of itself.
Daily goals set by master foreach slave per day, the penalty
generally one of three choicesby the master if you didn't meet
your reach your goals 39 lasheswith the lip with the whip,
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which was done more often thanthe other two 39 lashes is
significant.
I'll talk about that in just asecond.
One of the other ways ofpenalizing the slaves with
denial of dinner, and so yourmeal went from two meals to one
meal.
You would be denied dinner ifyou didn't meet your goals, and
those were considered the nicemasters, the ones who didn't
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whip you and just denied youdinner.
And of course, the third way inwhich, particularly for women
generally, slave masters whofound slave women an object of
sexual desire, if you want tocall it that in that context,
would generally set goals forher that he knew that she could
not meet, and of course thepenalty and most often, most
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often is that he raped her, andso he set those goals
intentionally so she couldn'tmeet them and then raped her
that evening.
And of course I say rape in itsultimate and absolute value,
because of course you couldn'trape a slave person or slave
woman during slavery, becauseAfricans were not considered
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human beings during slavery, andso I use the term rape as a
means of bonding with my sisters.
But of course slave masters hadslave women at whim sexually
and were never convicted for it.
But let's go back to the firstpenalty Thirty nine lashes with
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the whip, now one way of lookingat thirty nine.
You may ask why thirty nine.
Well, thirty nine also equalsto forty minus one.
Now where does that come from?
One of the things that we'regoing to see is that,
unfortunately, the slave tradehad drippings of divinity and
Christian faith in it, and manyslaveholders were taught by
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white Christian ministers thatthe slave trade itself was the
manifestation of the kingdom ofGod on earth and that they were
using sound biblical principlesin disciplining their slaves,
which created an even greaterunderstanding of righteousness
if you can believe it or notamong slaveholders for their
treatment of slaves.
(17:17):
But for those of you who arefamiliar with biblical
literature, you recognize this40 minus 1 construction.
In a number of areas in theBible, particularly as we begin
with the law of Moses and thewhole notion of flogging slaves,
we see the reference to 40lashes less one, which of course
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gives you mathematically 39, 40lashes was determined enough to
kill, so you wanted to punishthem up to the maximum without
killing them, and so many peoplewho had been beaten and flawed
to death had been flawed over 40times, and so they came up with
the rule in biblical history,40 minus one as a Levitical law
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in the law of Moses.
And thus 39 lashes is themaximum punishment short of
death.
And so you can see how twistedand diabolical the slave trade
becomes as it includes biblicalliterature in its understanding
of the kingdom of God, manifestin slavery.
Of the kingdom of God, manifestin slavery.
Specific passages when we lookat Deuteronomy 25, three of the
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Levitical law, we see 40 stripeshe may give him, he shall not
exceed.
If exceeded, then the brothershall be looked upon as vile or
wicked.
And so you could give thirtynine to your servants and still
be considered righteous in God'seyes, but once you hit 40 and
exceeded 40, you were lookedupon as violent.
So you see this, thirty ninelashes become very prevalent in
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the life of slavery.
As a means of discipliningslaves.
Criminals, transgressors of thelaw, were to receive no more
than 40 lashes.
Thus Jews gave criminals 39lashes for breaking the law.
And so you see this no morethan 40 lashes.
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Connotation and reference againIsaiah 53, five.
Another context the sufferingservice servant narrative.
For those of you who arefamiliar with Isaiah and its
content, isaiah 53 5 he waswounded for our transgressions,
bruised for our iniquities,chastisement of our peace upon
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him, and with his stripes we arehealed.
And so you see, slave mastersteach slaves that they're
putting stripes on their backbecause of course it's a
biblical reference.
And even slaves would arguewith each other about
insurrections and they'll saythat well, you know, I'm not
going to wear any stripes forthis insurrection, meaning I'm
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not going to get involved in it.
And so stripes becomes thelanguage of disciplining, from
both slave master and from slave.
But more importantly, whippingis seen as healing and later
salvific, that you love someoneenough.
And of course we have thisconversation when it comes to
disciplining our children.
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But when you begin to talkabout it within the context of a
diabolical institution, whereyou are actually doing this with
big, heavy flogs to other grownpeople, then it's salvific
leanings begin to part ways.
For me that that becomes moreclever sophistry to justify the
slave trade and yourdisciplining of slaves than is
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rooted in anything sound from abiblical standpoint.
So slaves would use thisterminology in conversation with
each other relative to wearingstripes and Second Corinthians,
11, 24, paul's persecution bythe Jews.
Paul states of the Jews fivetimes.
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I received, received I 40stripes, save one.
There you see the terminologyagain from Paul for the stripes
save one, which of course givesus thirty nine, save one, which
of course gives us thirty nine,and of course, in Jesus, his
passion experience with thisforty minus one terminology.
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There is no direct reference tothirty nine lashes with Jesus,
but of course he was scourgedand flogged by Pilate, but not
killed, which means that thereis sufficient evidence to
conclude that at some point intime Jesus was not only flogged
but he was flogged thirty ninetimes.
I'm sure that Pilate wasfamiliar with the terminology
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relative to 40 minus one that heinherited as the district
attorney in first centuryPalestine, if I may give him
such a lofty title, and ofcourse, and so he probably was
well aware of this 39 lasheslanguage and Jesus likely
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received strong.
I strongly think that Jesusreceived 39 lashes as part of
his passion before he wascrucified and so that 39 lashes
with the whip is not just a madeup number.
If the slave didn't reach thegoal, it was actually rooted in
the early life of the whiteChristian church.
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Unfortunately, women capturingthe master's eyes Women
capturing the master's eyes Ijust mentioned women were often
raped and given daily goals thatwere impossible to meet.
A lot of times when a slavewoman captured the master's eye,
she would be brought into thebig house for work so he could
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be close to her and he could benext to her so that he could
look at her and do whatever hewanted to to her, which always
created problems for thatparticular woman because she was
in an unwinnable situation Ifshe acquiesced to the slave
master's demand.
She draws the eye of the slavemaster's wife.
If she doesn't capitulate tothe slave master's demands, then
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likely he sells off to anotherplantation or flogs her brutally
.
Particularly, he sells off toanother plantation if he
discovers in any way, shape orform that she may be developing
a romantic relationship with afield hand on that particular
plantation, and so the way hewould punish her and him is to
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sell her off to anotherplantation.
And so she was put in asituation that was acutely
unwinnable for her.
Once she was brought into thebig house for work, many of them
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, if they were recaptured, werebrought back and they were
flogged mercilessly in publicsquare to send a message to the
other slaves that this was whatwill happen to you if you have
the same idea and you act on it.
Generally, posse's would runout after they learn of the
slave escaping, and they would,of course, put a scent on the
clothes that slaves wore, andthey would have cloth materials
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of it, samples of it, and theywould give it to the dogs so
that the dogs could sniff thescent and then, of course, lead
them in a direction where theslaves was going.
This was also a riskyproposition, particularly since,
early in the Slavocracy, youdidn't know the land well.
You didn't know the land, thefallout of the land, well.
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This became more and moreaccessible, though, as we moved
through the slave trade,particularly as we moved into
the 19th century and we actuallybegan to form some alliances
with whites who began to seethat slavery was an abominable
institution and, moreimportantly, that it was an
immoral institution.
The mortality rate was high, sothat necessitated the frequent
(25:10):
voyages to Africa that wediscussed in the last segment.
Slaves usually end up gettingin fights with slaveholders.
Slaveholders have to kill them.
Sometimes they run away and die.
When they have run away,sometimes they're brought back
and beaten so mercilessly thatthey end up dying, and so it
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necessitated frequent voyages toAfrica, but the importation
stopped supposedly in 1740 to1750, when what I refer to as
the import domestic ratiobecomes one in one.
And what do I mean by that?
By the time we hit 1740, 1750,we are about 120 years into
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slavery, and by this time slavemen and women were having
children at a rate on theplantation.
Slave men and women were havingchildren at a rate on the
plantation that was equal to thenumber of slaves that they were
bringing in per year, and sothat's what I call the import
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domestic ratio.
Once it reached one one oneslave born for every one slave
brought in, those importationssupposedly stopped, but even as
late as 18, even though it wasoutlawed in 1808, even as late
as 1850, as I said in theprevious segment, we see illegal
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importations happening to bringin even more slaves in the
1840s, and of course part ofthis had to do with the fact,
too is that we were in the midstof the Underground Railroad
with Harriet Tubman, and moreand more slaves were running
away, and so, as slaveholderssaw it, they were justified in
engaging in these clandestineimportations of slaves in the
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middle of the night so that theywould not get caught.
And more particularly, slavery,as taught by white Christian
ministers, was to be an eternalinstitution, that even in 2025,
today, we're still supposed tobe slaves Technically.
I tell my students this all thetime that as the older person
in the room, I'm supposed to betrying to show you, as younger
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people, how to survive theplantation.
We're not supposed to be havingdiscussions about slavery.
We are supposed to still beslaves because it was styled by
white Christian ministers as aneternal institution and we were
never meant to be free.
But the fact that we are freeat least from the institution of
slavery is a testament to tworealities number one, god's
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partiality for liberatingoppressed people and number two,
our never letting go of theplow of freedom, even in our
darkest days in plantation life.
And it was not because of thosetwo factors factors we could
very much find ourselves in thesame institution that would
never have ended.
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Speaking of regulating behavioras we move into the late 17th
18th century and we start seeingthe emergence of politics and
it becomes more and moreprominent in the life of the
colonies as we head into theRevolutionary War.
And in the United States ofAmerica, we're going to see the
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establishment of slave slavecodes or laws created by our
discussion, because, of course,there's always been a concerted
effort, from the plantation evento the day, to control the
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behavior of black people, tocontrol the behavior of
african-american people, to tellus where to live, to tell us
what to read, to tell us how weshould be educated, to tell us
how to dress, to tell us how tothink, particularly
theologically and religiously.
And so one of the reasons whythe black church was started was
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so that the white church andwhite Christian ministers could
influence slave behavior andregulate slave behavior by using
religion, particular themeslike submission and obedience,
and the notion that when yousubmit to your slave master,
when you're obedient to yourslave master, you're also being
obedient to God as well.
(29:28):
And, of course, white imageswith Jesus were were touted,
particularly as we move into the19th century, and became more
and more prevalent as a way ofsuggesting subconsciously to the
slave that because Jesus iswhite and because your slave
hold is white, that thedrippings of divinity lie in the
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very people who are enslavingyou.
And since you are non-white,you are further away from
divinity.
And so in order for you tobecome righteous and for you to
experience eternal life afterdeath, you need to be obedient
to the people in whose imageJesus is in that they very
wicked way of connecting divinereality with the context of
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human bondage and blackdehumanization.
And so every effort was made totake power away from slaves and
the significant dimensions ofhuman existence, ie to make the
slave feel totally dependent onthe master.
And, of course, as I said inthe previous segment, they would
break brothers and sisters up,born siblings, blood siblings,
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to destroy any sense of socialcohesion, because the
slaveholder wanted slaves to betotally dependent on him for the
necessities of life.
We see that mentality stillprevalent today.
Ultimately, relative toemployment, relative to
economics, relative to theultimate decisions that are
being made in the life of thecountry, in the world, they are
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still being made mainly by whitemen, and they are being made
not only for white men, but theyare being made for everyone
else.
And so, in that sense, thefoundation of the slave codes
mentality, wise in many ways,still exists today.
Let's take a look at 10 ofthese codes, codes that I want
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to bring to our attentiontonight.
Slaves could not leave numberone, the plantation, without
permission of the master orunless accompanied by a white
person.
We also saw this in SouthAfrica, with apartheid as well
that you could not go intoJohannesburg unless you had your
passbook or your passport, thatyou could not go into
Johannesburg unless you had yourpassbook or your passport One
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of the things that NelsonMandela did before he was
arrested and sent to jail for 27years.
To protest the booklet that youneeded to get into Johannesburg
, he burned it in open square.
He set fire to it in opensquare, which only increased his
visibility to be in prison forpublicly flouting and taunting
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the South African law relativeto black people.
And so you could not leave theplantation without permission of
a master or unless you wereaccompanied by a white person.
You usually used to have tohave a pass, particularly in
Virginia and Maryland.
Frederick Douglas talked abouthaving to have a pass to go into
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town, and that's one of the.
That's one of the.
In fact, that ended up beingthe way in which he escaped.
He went into town and he wasable to slip away.
At that time, he had someonewith him.
He was able to slip away fromthem and move from slave to free
status.
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Number two slaves could notgather on the plantation in
numbers larger than five Forobvious reasons because of the
lack of trust in slaves andbecause of the slave penchant to
want to run away from theplantation like anyone would.
In that context, slaveholdersdidn't allow slaves to gather in
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numbers larger than five.
Even when the black church wasstarted, slaveholders would go
in as well as white ministersand sit in the back of the
church to make sure that slaveswere not plotting insurrection,
which was a risky propositionfor them to allow slaves to
gather in numbers larger thanfive.
But the slave code was thatslaves could not gather on the
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plantation numbers larger thanfive.
Three slaves could not own aweapon of any kind for obvious
reasons, to be used ininsurrection, to use to kill the
mass.
And of course, when we, when wesee the insurrectionists come,
the insurrections happen becauseslaves are able to get a hold
(33:47):
of weapons and use them inbloody, violent insurrections.
We see that in the insurrectionof Nat Turner at Gabriel
Prosser and right down inCharleston with Denmark Vesey.
We even see in 1859, john Brown, a white minister who had led a
successful slave revolt inMissouri, break into the armory
in Harpers Ferry, virginia, andseize weapons and armed slaves
(34:12):
for insurrection in HarpersFerry Virginia.
And so we still have thatdebate today constitutionally in
America whether it's good toown a gun or not, and we see so
much gun violence today.
We see a different conversationtoday than the one then, but we
still have been a weapon crazyand a weapon conscience kind of
(34:35):
nation, and so weapons becamethe basis by which you either
defended what you had currentlycreated or whether you were
trying to destroy what you werebrought into.
If you were a slave Four, anyslave attempting to run away
received a death penalty.
Now this has to be put in itsproper context.
(34:56):
Even though it was a slave code, if you were able to capture a
runaway slave and get him backto the plantation, you didn't
want to kill him because youlost the labor.
So this slave code was enactedmore to scare slaves than
anything else.
Very seldom were slaves killedif they were captured after
(35:17):
running away.
But, more particularly, I callthis, you know, not another
slave code, but a correspondingslave code because it's in the
same area.
In our state of South Carolinain 1712, a runaway slave evading
capture for at least 20 daysthe first offense he was
(35:40):
publicly whipped.
If he evaded capture for 20days most of the time too, if
you could get away for 20 daysyou probably had a good chance
of making it to freedom,particularly when the
Underground Railroad comes alongin the 19th century, but at
this point it doesn't exist yet.
The second offense If youevaded capture for at least 20
(36:02):
days, you were branded with an Ron your right cheek.
There's another brand that wetalk about, and of course, the R
means runaway, and this wasdone quite frequently because it
involved a lot of pain for thebrand to be put on your face and
, at the same time, it couldsend a message without killing
(36:24):
you, and they could continue tobenefit from your labor.
The third offense your ear wascut off.
Yes, you heard me right, yourear was cut off.
Now, why your ear?
Namely because your ear can becut off in such a way by a
novice and you not bleed out,which would not necessarily be
the case if they cut your tongueout.
(36:44):
Sometimes they would cut yourtongue out and you would bleed
out.
They didn't want you to bleedout because they didn't want you
to die, and so they wanted youto stay alive, and so a lot of
times they would cut off the earand it would be excruciatingly
painful, as you might suspect,but at the same time, it would
not cause you to bleed out andbe bleed to death.
And, of course, the fourthoffense um, this also had to be
(37:07):
done without the slave manbleeding out, and he was
castrated.
Um, which is why it's thefourth offense, because you had
to be skilled at cutting them insuch a way and he scrolled them
so that he wouldn't bleed out.
Most of the time he would, andso that's why this is the fourth
offense for a runaway slaveevading capture for at least 20
(37:29):
days.
And so you can see that thebattle lines are clearly drawn,
the gauntlet is thrown down, and, of course, they try to do
everything they can to imposeexcruciating pain on the slave,
while at the same time trying tokeep them alive so that they
can continue to exploit theirlabor.
Five no slave could work for pay.
(37:49):
Of course, we continue to havean economic crisis in America
that's growing even widerbetween the haves and the
have-nots.
Even in a Christian nation thatis supposed to be concerned
primarily with transforming theconditions of the poor, we seem
to be headed in the oppositedirection than that.
And so slaves could not workfor pay, obviously so that you
(38:10):
couldn't develop any type ofwealth or material base in order
for you to form an insurrectionbut even further than that, to
lay the foundation for you tobuild communities, which we saw
post-slavery.
To lay the foundation for youto build communities which we
saw post slavery, that we saw inWilmington, that we saw in
Chicago, that we saw inGreenwood in Oklahoma.
(38:32):
And so we see thesedevelopments of African American
money moving around in thecommunity through different
merchants, post slavery.
And the fear even then was thatif you gave slaves money that
they may use it for theirbenefit, not to remain slaves.
Although there were some slavesthat ignored slaveholders, that
(38:53):
ignored this particular umslave code and paid some of
their slaves and their slavesbrought their freedom.
David Walker purchased hisfreedom.
A number of other slavespurchased their freedom because
they saved every penny that theywere given by their slaveholder
and, of course, once theslaveholder had gotten set the
(39:22):
price for what he paid for andfor and they paid the slave
master that amount Someslaveholders would free slaves.
This would eventually thiswould certainly be the case as
we move into the 19th century.
Still here in the 18th century,most slaves, if not all,
receive no pay for their work.
Six, no slave could marry.
Of course, that will allow youto establish meaning and
(39:44):
propositiveness in the life ofyour community relative to
establishing families.
Social cohesion was a big issueamong slave masters.
They did not want slaves todevelop social cohesion.
They did allow slaves to have aceremony and of course it's
famously known as jumping thebroom, and this is an adaptation
from an African culturalexpression wherein the wife of a
(40:10):
newlywed couple would take abroom and sweep out the front
porch of their house and thesidewalk in front of the house
as a means of not allowing evilwizards to come in and destroy
the life they were trying tobuild as a family.
So you can see, even in Africa,family life was very big for
African people, and so we seethat adaptation even today, as
(40:33):
we can now have ceremonies andsome couples have
conscientiously put the broomjumping ceremony into their
wedding.
Whether it's during the serviceat the church or whether it's
during their reception at thetown hall.
We still see the broom jumpingritual and remembrance of our
(40:55):
ancestors whose marriages werenot recognized, but they could
broom jump Seven.
No slave could have a birthcertificate, namely because it
humanizes you, and so mostslaves, and even post-slavery we
, couldn't have a birthcertificate.
In fact that's a relatively newphenomenon for
African-Americans.
(41:15):
Even as late as the 1960s,african-americans didn't get
birth certificates.
Midwives delivered black kidsand the midwife would write it
down on a piece of paper thedate and the year and the time,
and of course, they would foldthat paper up and put it in that
big Bible that we had in ourcoffee tables in our homes as
African Americans um, um,because you couldn't have an
(41:39):
official birth certificate.
So that's how we knew what ourage was and our birthday was
when the midwife delivered us.
And so the very simple reasonwhy this is the case is because
white people could have a birthcertificate, and so you're
starting to see any type ofcoalescing as being anathema to
(42:02):
the white community, that theywanted to be able to separate
themselves from black people interms of what makes one
fundamentally human.
And, of course, denyingmarriage on the one hand,
denying birth certificate, areways in which you draw that
sharp distinction between yoursuperiority as a white community
and black people's inferiority.
(42:27):
Eight as chattel, slave womencould not refuse sex from a
white man.
As I said earlier, there was nosuch thing as rape, even though
it was rape, as black women didnot want to have sex with their
slaveholders.
We do see some slave womenusing that as a basis socially
to try to derive favors from theslave master.
(42:50):
We saw that, of course,prominently with Thomas
Jefferson and Sally Hemings, buteven Sally Hemings' mother had
a relationship with theslaveholder and created a
relationship with thatslaveholder, with the you
knowholder, with the hope thatit could derive some type of
humanizing gesture from theslave master as a result of it.
(43:11):
One of the things, ironically,that Thomas Jefferson promised
Sally Hemings is that he wouldnot sell the slaves to another
plantation, even as he hit acutefinancial crisis, namely
because the slaves that livedtogether with each other for so
long they didn't want to bebroken up.
And so, even though Jeffersondied, a broke man, monticello,
sally Hemings was able to getthat promise from him.
(43:32):
Yet at the same time, she saidto him when he tried to rape her
the first time they had sex,she said to him you don't have
to do that, you own me.
And so, in that sense, a slavewoman could not refuse sex from
a white man.
Slave men nine could not becircumcised.
Again, it distinguishes youfrom white men who could be
circumcised, and so my PSA toyou is that, for young men who
(43:56):
are not circumcised.
Please get circumcised Mothers.
Please make sure your sons getcircumcised, particularly as
they grow older, as they producechildren and as they become
sexually active and they need tobe circumcised.
And so?
But at the time, slave mencould not be circumcised Again.
(44:18):
This is a new phenomenon, likethe birth certificate.
Even into the 1930s, 40s, 50s,black men were not getting
circumcised because many of themwere born at home and when they
were born to the midwife, theydidn't get circumcised.
And so please make sure that wedo this for men.
But of course, white men couldget circumcised, not black men.
(44:39):
And so yet another distinctionbetween black and white humanity
.
And, of course, the 10th one,which is very significant for me
as an educator and as the sonof two educators, both my mother
and father no slave could learnto read or write.
The penalty was death if youwere caught teaching a slave to
(45:00):
read and write.
And of course, it was FrederickDouglass who said that
knowledge makes a man unfit tobe a slave to read and write.
And of course it was FrederickDouglass who said that knowledge
makes a man unfit to be a slave.
And so, as Frederick Douglassgrew and other blacks who could
read grew, the fear fromslaveholders and white Christian
ministers.
White politicians well foundthat if they learn how to read,
they're going to write books andwrite speeches condemning
(45:22):
slavery.
And that's exactly what theydid and then taught others how
to read and to write as well.
We see this with FrederickDouglass in his book, of course,
narrative of the life ofFrederick Douglass and my
bondage, my freedom.
We see this with Harriet Jacobsincidents in the life of a
slave girl.
And, of course, we see thiswith David Walker's appeal to
the colored citizens of America,one of the most highly
(45:44):
significant and incendiarydocuments in the history of this
country and the past halfmillennium.
And so this is why my PSA alwaysis to my students read
something every day.
And if you can write somethingevery day, there was a time when
we could not do this and writesomething every day.
There was a time when we couldnot do this.
And of course, you need tomaximize your opportunity now to
(46:08):
become as educated as youpossibly can, both formally and
informally, and never take forgranted the ability to be able
to read and the ability to beable to write, because the pen,
in many cases, in the onwardmarch of human civilization and
human development is mightierthan the sword and that you can
(46:29):
transform world historicalsituations with your pen and
with your tongue quicker thanyou can with a tank, with a
machete or with a sword.
And so we have seen this in ourhistory as well, and we've seen
it with Malcolm X, we've seenit with Martin Luther King,
we've seen it with WB Du Bois,we've seen it with Ida B Wells
(46:49):
Barnett People who could writeit, people who could say it and
transformed black existence andmade this world look at black
people as human beings, and tosee black Americans at the
vanguard of forwarding changefor oppressed people, not only
in America but throughout theworld, in China, in South Africa
(47:10):
, in India, taking their cuefrom African-American people who
learn how to read and write anduse that knowledge to be able
to craft speeches and to be ableto craft literary works that
shook up the world, as they say,relative to the notion of
bondage and the relationship ofhuman bondage to a God that
(47:34):
liberates God's people, thatdoes not condone bondage and is
partial, and take sides againstthe poor, the marginalized, the
vilified and the demonized inworld events and world
historical affairs.
And so learn how to read andwrite, continue to learn how to
(47:56):
read and write.
Don't ever take this forgranted, because someone died
for your ability to be able toread and write and didn't even
know your name.
And so that concludes segmenttwo strange and hostile land.
In segment three, as I touchedon it a little bit even just now
(48:19):
, I'm talking about the Godthat's partial in situations of
oppression.
We're going to take a look at alecture referred to as the
coming of the gods, and we'regoing to see, as we move into
the late 18th, into the early19th century, two different
theologies emerging inplantation life, publicly One,
of course, slave holdingtheology, which equated biblical
(48:42):
revelation and Christian faithwith African slavery.
But on the other hand, you'regoing to see a different type of
theology emerge for Africans asthey begin to lay the
foundation themselves, as theybegin to read the Bible more,
grow in Christianity more, andthey are going to be able to see
a different biblical story andthey are going to be able to
(49:04):
convey that to their story andthey're going to be able to to
convey that to their people andto the world.
And so we'll look at that nextsegment.
It's titled the coming of thegods.
Thank you for listening to thissegment.
Again, I hope it wasenlightening and informative and
I'll see you again next segment.
Thank you very much for joiningus and have a good night.
Good evening everyone .
Welcome to segment two of thepodcast, native Drums.
I am Dr Harry Singleton.
I'll be with you again tonight.
If you can recall, the lastsegment ended with the shipment
of African barter to the newAmericas, both the United States
America and to the Caribbeanand South America.
(00:36):
Tonight we take a closer lookat the process by which they
went, from the holes of ships tothe plantations in which they
find themselves, and this is whyI titled this particular
lecture A Strange and HostileLand.
Of course, for those of you whoare familiar with the 137th
Psalm, they asked, of course,the children of Israel in
(01:00):
Babylonian captivity to sing usthe joyous songs of Zion, and of
course they responded how canwe sing the Lord'sous songs of
Zion?
And of course, they respondedhow can we sing the Lord songs
in a strange and hostile land?
And so because of that, I havetitled this lecture a strange
and hostile land.
After being broken in by slavebreakers in the West Indies,
(01:26):
slaves were then shipped to theSouth Americas, the Caribbean
and, of course, to what we nowknow today as the United States
of America and, of course, theMiddle Passages.
First stop was the West Indies,because it was a central
location for creating slaves anddistributing them to other
(01:47):
parts of the Western hemisphere.
Slaves were also sent to Brazilthey're more there than any
other continent, many other, anyother country in the Western
hemisphere.
They were sent to Peru, theywere sent to Argentina, and they
were also sent to Mexico.
As it relates, though, to theUnited States of America, the
(02:12):
colonial precursor to the UnitedStates of America, slaves were
sent to three major auctioncities here, major auction
cities here, and of course,those three major auction cities
(02:32):
, richmond, virginia, newOrleans, louisiana and of course
, our very own Charleston, southCarolina.
In fact, charleston, southCarolina had the reputation for
having the best slaves of eitherRichmond or New Orleans.
Of course, charleston and NewOrleans are right on the water,
they're water cities, richmond alittle further inland, and
that's the distinction betweenthe two.
(02:53):
But of course it made moresense, logically, to have a
trading port for auction be at awater city like Charleston and
like New Orleans, and so we evensee slave traders in Virginia,
tennessee, kentucky, mississippicome to Charleston, south
(03:16):
Carolina, even though Richmondor New Orleans may have been
closer, namely because theso-called best slaves, in terms
of what you were looking for,you would find in Charleston,
south Carolina, and so slaveport still there.
Good visit to increase yourhistorical awareness of
(03:41):
Charleston and its role in theslave trade.
The market in which they wereauctioned still there as well.
Great trip to take to increaseyour intellectual awareness of
the slave trade.
As it relates to the auctionatmosphere, it was nothing short
of a carnival like atmospherehot dogs, coca-colas, popcorn,
(04:06):
cotton candy.
It was like a fair and theslaveholders, kids, look forward
to going to auctions.
They look forward to going toCharleston, look forward to
going to New Orleans, lookforward to going to Richmond to
enjoy themselves, while theirfathers, of course, purchased
slaves to bring back to theirfathers, of course, purchased
slaves to bring back to theirplantation.
And, of course, during theauction process, slaves are
(04:31):
brought on auction stage one byone and they were sold to the
highest bidder, not unlikeanything you've seen in a
reenactment movie like Roots or12 Years a Slave.
Reenactment movie like Roots or12 Years a Slave.
From a strategic standpoint, itis important to know that
families were broken up bydesign.
(04:52):
Whenever they discovered thatthere were siblings on a
particular voyage brought toauction, they made sure that
those siblings did not go to thesame plantation.
They were broken up by designto destroy a sense of social
cohesion among the slaves and,of course, to inspire other
(05:13):
slaves in a joint effort toinsurrection.
And so one of the issues thatwe deal with today is still
dealing with broken families inthe black community, namely
because of the hundreds of yearsin which the family was
intentionally targeted by theslave holding community in order
(05:34):
to create this unity and tocreate, did and to diminish
social cohesion.
Slaves that were not purchasedwere considered refuse slaves or
refuse slaves, and they weresubject to something that was
probably even more demeaningthey were subject to what is
referred to as a scramble sale,and that is, on the last day of
(05:58):
the auction the slaveholderswould be given a booklet, and
these are very, very elaboratebooklets, kind of like what you
would see when you go to acommencement, when you see
parchment paper, resume, likepaper.
That is the paper that they useto list the slaves and to list
what their attributes wererelative to their contribution
(06:21):
to plantation life.
Relative to their contributionto plantation life, and so,
generally, if you were notselected as a slave, there was
probably some deformity with theslave, there were probably some
impending health problems.
There are probably somemobility problems.
There are probably some earlyhealth problems or physical
problems as to why they were notselected.
(06:42):
But on the last day of theauction they would just open the
doors of the slave auction siteand slave holders would walk in
and just select slaves and theycould get them for free on
scramble sale day or last day,which was particularly demeaning
(07:03):
on that day, not for not justfor the slaves who got selected,
but also for the slaves who didnot get selected.
They were.
If they were not purchased, theywere left to die on the wharf.
As we now know today it'sGadsden's Wharf where the
International African AmericanMuseum is located, but they were
(07:35):
left to die on the wharf.
Now, on the one hand, you maysay well, you know, this is a
strange turn of fortunate events, in a sense that they were not
selected, but on the other hand,they were in a foreign land
that they were not from, inwhich they were not familiar.
They were in a hostile landthat, of course, was hostile to
the achievement of blackaspiration and of course they
were already branded in the lifeof the religious community as
demonic because they had darkskin.
(07:56):
And so you have no change ofclothes and you have no food,
you don't know anyone and youwere not selected to go to a
plantation.
And so many people, many ofthem, were left to die on the
wharf and that's exactly whathappened to them.
Only a few of them were able toscrounge out some type of
meager life, going forward anddo odd jobs for people downtown,
(08:18):
but that was a hostileproposition in and of itself to
see somebody black walkingaround downtown that did not
belong to an owner and did nothave any past papers to come
into town.
Until we start seeing theinfusion of free blacks who came
to America much later and werenever slaves.
(08:39):
But at this point in the slavetrade, this is a very, very
dicey reality for those slaves,that many of whom subject to a
scramble sale and left to die onthe wharf.
As it relates to plantation lifeitself, once on the plantation,
(09:00):
slaves were immediately numberone, branded with estate marks.
Now this is their second mark.
If you can recall, the firstbrand was with the ship company,
so that the ship company couldget credit for that particular
slave, and then they werebranded again with estate marks,
many of many, of many, of whomwere branded on the outside of
(09:24):
their lower legs.
Some were even branded on theirchest and on their arms and of
course they were very painful inthe process of branding.
And of course this is raised acontemporary discussion relative
to Greek letter organizationsmy fellow Greek brothers and
sisters out there relative tothe significance of the brand,
(09:44):
the requirement of the brand inyesteryear, that this was a
throwback to slavery, and thatit has been sharply criticized
by progressive thinking blackleaders that we should not be
doing this to each other orrequiring it as admission into a
Greek letter organization.
And so the brand has come upagain in contemporary
(10:07):
conversation relative to anotherwise enhancing process of
becoming a member of a Greekletter organization, to still
live in the world of brands.
And of course, the second thingthat happened once they got to
plantations was that they weregiven European names and of
(10:28):
course this would become a bigissue as we move forward and
develop organizations,particularly black or
nationalist organizations likethe Nation of Islam.
Well, of course, the leadership, namely Elijah Muhammad,
maintained that we must changeour names because the names that
we have were the names given tous by our slave master and he
would.
It was given to us because itwas his name and so our surnames
(10:52):
like mine, of course, beingSingleton um was a name that was
given to denote ownership ofyou, and of course, it's one of
the first things you do as ahuman being.
When you own something, youname it.
When we get a cat or dog andbring it home as a pet, one of
the first things we do is nameit, and so naming is very
significant in cultural identity, which is why an organization
(11:16):
like the Nation of Islam usesthe X, where you abandon that
slave name and you adopt the X,as we saw with Malcolm X, and X
means origin unknown, meaningthat you don't know your name,
that the only name you do knowbecause of the way Africa has
been pillaged culturally, thatthe only name you do know is the
(11:37):
name that your slave mastergave you and you don't know your
original name in West Africa,and so they were immediately
branded with a state marks andthey were given European names.
Slave quarters that were builtfor them on plantations often
lacked the floor and often likeheat.
(11:59):
Generally, they had to create afire outside and get as warm as
they could and bring some coalsin and try to use them to keep
them warm, particularly inwinter nights in Virginia and
North Carolina and MarilynFrederick Douglass talked about
those cold winter nights when hewas a slave and most of the
(12:23):
time they lacked the floor andheat, which was very, very
inhumane.
But that's what the intent was.
The intent was to impose aninhumane context on African
slaves at every turn in coloniallife, and we'll look at that
more closely, colonial life andwe'll look at that more closely
(12:48):
in just a second.
Food and clothes rationed perslave usually consisted number
one, of four changes of clothesper year.
So for those of you who havefour closets full of clothes now
, you know your ancestors hadfour changes of clothes per year
and so, and sometimes with someslave masters, it was to a
(13:15):
winter outfit and a summeroutfit with a jacket and boots
and, of course, to sometimes onemeal a day, mostly with no meat
of course, namely because theywanted to get as much labor out
of slaves on a daily basis asthey could and they felt that if
they fed slaves too much,particularly meat, that it would
test the slave to laziness andlack of industry.
And of course, which is one ofthe reasons why we pigged out on
(13:35):
Sunday as often as we can,because we got Sunday off most
of the time, but we ate verylittle during the week, by
design so that we would not begiven over to so-called laziness
and so that the optimum amountof labor could be obtained from
us in a given day.
Labor was constant and merciless.
(13:56):
Of course the historians havereferred to it as from can't see
to can't see, have referred toit as from can't see the can't
see, from can't see dawn tocan't see dusk, and a lot of
times, particularly during thecotton harvest, which was in
late August, early September,which is why slaves hated the
time of year, of labor day.
They would work 18 to even 20hours a day, only get four hours
(14:20):
of rest and had to be back tobrain cotton to harvest and
sometimes pick 500 pounds ofcotton a day.
And of course this came out inthe movie 12 Years a Slave.
And you think about how light acotton ball is, think about how
much you have to pick and putin satchels to end up with 500
(14:41):
pounds.
That's inhumane and mercilessin and of itself.
Daily goals set by master foreach slave per day, the penalty
generally one of three choicesby the master if you didn't meet
your reach your goals 39 lasheswith the lip with the whip,
(15:04):
which was done more often thanthe other two 39 lashes is
significant.
I'll talk about that in just asecond.
One of the other ways ofpenalizing the slaves with
denial of dinner, and so yourmeal went from two meals to one
meal.
You would be denied dinner ifyou didn't meet your goals, and
those were considered the nicemasters, the ones who didn't
(15:25):
whip you and just denied youdinner.
And of course, the third way inwhich, particularly for women
generally, slave masters whofound slave women an object of
sexual desire, if you want tocall it that in that context,
would generally set goals forher that he knew that she could
not meet, and of course thepenalty and most often, most
(15:48):
often is that he raped her, andso he set those goals
intentionally so she couldn'tmeet them and then raped her
that evening.
And of course I say rape in itsultimate and absolute value,
because of course you couldn'trape a slave person or slave
woman during slavery, becauseAfricans were not considered
(16:10):
human beings during slavery, andso I use the term rape as a
means of bonding with my sisters.
But of course slave masters hadslave women at whim sexually
and were never convicted for it.
But let's go back to the firstpenalty Thirty nine lashes with
(16:34):
the whip, now one way of lookingat thirty nine.
You may ask why thirty nine.
Well, thirty nine also equalsto forty minus one.
Now where does that come from?
One of the things that we'regoing to see is that,
unfortunately, the slave tradehad drippings of divinity and
Christian faith in it, and manyslaveholders were taught by
(16:56):
white Christian ministers thatthe slave trade itself was the
manifestation of the kingdom ofGod on earth and that they were
using sound biblical principlesin disciplining their slaves,
which created an even greaterunderstanding of righteousness
if you can believe it or notamong slaveholders for their
treatment of slaves.
(17:17):
But for those of you who arefamiliar with biblical
literature, you recognize this40 minus 1 construction.
In a number of areas in theBible, particularly as we begin
with the law of Moses and thewhole notion of flogging slaves,
we see the reference to 40lashes less one, which of course
(17:40):
gives you mathematically 39, 40lashes was determined enough to
kill, so you wanted to punishthem up to the maximum without
killing them, and so many peoplewho had been beaten and flawed
to death had been flawed over 40times, and so they came up with
the rule in biblical history,40 minus one as a Levitical law
(18:04):
in the law of Moses.
And thus 39 lashes is themaximum punishment short of
death.
And so you can see how twistedand diabolical the slave trade
becomes as it includes biblicalliterature in its understanding
of the kingdom of God, manifestin slavery.
Of the kingdom of God, manifestin slavery.
Specific passages when we lookat Deuteronomy 25, three of the
(18:34):
Levitical law, we see 40 stripeshe may give him, he shall not
exceed.
If exceeded, then the brothershall be looked upon as vile or
wicked.
And so you could give thirtynine to your servants and still
be considered righteous in God'seyes, but once you hit 40 and
exceeded 40, you were lookedupon as violent.
So you see this, thirty ninelashes become very prevalent in
(18:55):
the life of slavery.
As a means of discipliningslaves.
Criminals, transgressors of thelaw, were to receive no more
than 40 lashes.
Thus Jews gave criminals 39lashes for breaking the law.
And so you see this no morethan 40 lashes.
(19:15):
Connotation and reference againIsaiah 53, five.
Another context the sufferingservice servant narrative.
For those of you who arefamiliar with Isaiah and its
content, isaiah 53 5 he waswounded for our transgressions,
bruised for our iniquities,chastisement of our peace upon
(19:39):
him, and with his stripes we arehealed.
And so you see, slave mastersteach slaves that they're
putting stripes on their backbecause of course it's a
biblical reference.
And even slaves would arguewith each other about
insurrections and they'll saythat well, you know, I'm not
going to wear any stripes forthis insurrection, meaning I'm
(20:01):
not going to get involved in it.
And so stripes becomes thelanguage of disciplining, from
both slave master and from slave.
But more importantly, whippingis seen as healing and later
salvific, that you love someoneenough.
And of course we have thisconversation when it comes to
disciplining our children.
(20:22):
But when you begin to talkabout it within the context of a
diabolical institution, whereyou are actually doing this with
big, heavy flogs to other grownpeople, then it's salvific
leanings begin to part ways.
For me that that becomes moreclever sophistry to justify the
slave trade and yourdisciplining of slaves than is
(20:45):
rooted in anything sound from abiblical standpoint.
So slaves would use thisterminology in conversation with
each other relative to wearingstripes and Second Corinthians,
11, 24, paul's persecution bythe Jews.
Paul states of the Jews fivetimes.
(21:07):
I received, received I 40stripes, save one.
There you see the terminologyagain from Paul for the stripes
save one, which of course givesus thirty nine, save one, which
of course gives us thirty nine,and of course, in Jesus, his
passion experience with thisforty minus one terminology.
(21:28):
There is no direct reference tothirty nine lashes with Jesus,
but of course he was scourgedand flogged by Pilate, but not
killed, which means that thereis sufficient evidence to
conclude that at some point intime Jesus was not only flogged
but he was flogged thirty ninetimes.
I'm sure that Pilate wasfamiliar with the terminology
(21:51):
relative to 40 minus one that heinherited as the district
attorney in first centuryPalestine, if I may give him
such a lofty title, and ofcourse, and so he probably was
well aware of this 39 lasheslanguage and Jesus likely
(22:12):
received strong.
I strongly think that Jesusreceived 39 lashes as part of
his passion before he wascrucified and so that 39 lashes
with the whip is not just a madeup number.
If the slave didn't reach thegoal, it was actually rooted in
the early life of the whiteChristian church.
(22:35):
Unfortunately, women capturingthe master's eyes Women
capturing the master's eyes Ijust mentioned women were often
raped and given daily goals thatwere impossible to meet.
A lot of times when a slavewoman captured the master's eye,
she would be brought into thebig house for work so he could
(22:57):
be close to her and he could benext to her so that he could
look at her and do whatever hewanted to to her, which always
created problems for thatparticular woman because she was
in an unwinnable situation Ifshe acquiesced to the slave
master's demand.
She draws the eye of the slavemaster's wife.
If she doesn't capitulate tothe slave master's demands, then
(23:20):
likely he sells off to anotherplantation or flogs her brutally
.
Particularly, he sells off toanother plantation if he
discovers in any way, shape orform that she may be developing
a romantic relationship with afield hand on that particular
plantation, and so the way hewould punish her and him is to
(23:41):
sell her off to anotherplantation.
And so she was put in asituation that was acutely
unwinnable for her.
Once she was brought into thebig house for work, many of them
(24:03):
, if they were recaptured, werebrought back and they were
flogged mercilessly in publicsquare to send a message to the
other slaves that this was whatwill happen to you if you have
the same idea and you act on it.
Generally, posse's would runout after they learn of the
slave escaping, and they would,of course, put a scent on the
clothes that slaves wore, andthey would have cloth materials
(24:26):
of it, samples of it, and theywould give it to the dogs so
that the dogs could sniff thescent and then, of course, lead
them in a direction where theslaves was going.
This was also a riskyproposition, particularly since,
early in the Slavocracy, youdidn't know the land well.
You didn't know the land, thefallout of the land, well.
(24:46):
This became more and moreaccessible, though, as we moved
through the slave trade,particularly as we moved into
the 19th century and we actuallybegan to form some alliances
with whites who began to seethat slavery was an abominable
institution and, moreimportantly, that it was an
immoral institution.
The mortality rate was high, sothat necessitated the frequent
(25:10):
voyages to Africa that wediscussed in the last segment.
Slaves usually end up gettingin fights with slaveholders.
Slaveholders have to kill them.
Sometimes they run away and die.
When they have run away,sometimes they're brought back
and beaten so mercilessly thatthey end up dying, and so it
(25:31):
necessitated frequent voyages toAfrica, but the importation
stopped supposedly in 1740 to1750, when what I refer to as
the import domestic ratiobecomes one in one.
And what do I mean by that?
By the time we hit 1740, 1750,we are about 120 years into
(25:54):
slavery, and by this time slavemen and women were having
children at a rate on theplantation.
Slave men and women were havingchildren at a rate on the
plantation that was equal to thenumber of slaves that they were
bringing in per year, and sothat's what I call the import
(26:14):
domestic ratio.
Once it reached one one oneslave born for every one slave
brought in, those importationssupposedly stopped, but even as
late as 18, even though it wasoutlawed in 1808, even as late
as 1850, as I said in theprevious segment, we see illegal
(26:35):
importations happening to bringin even more slaves in the
1840s, and of course part ofthis had to do with the fact,
too is that we were in the midstof the Underground Railroad
with Harriet Tubman, and moreand more slaves were running
away, and so, as slaveholderssaw it, they were justified in
engaging in these clandestineimportations of slaves in the
(26:58):
middle of the night so that theywould not get caught.
And more particularly, slavery,as taught by white Christian
ministers, was to be an eternalinstitution, that even in 2025,
today, we're still supposed tobe slaves Technically.
I tell my students this all thetime that as the older person
in the room, I'm supposed to betrying to show you, as younger
(27:20):
people, how to survive theplantation.
We're not supposed to be havingdiscussions about slavery.
We are supposed to still beslaves because it was styled by
white Christian ministers as aneternal institution and we were
never meant to be free.
But the fact that we are freeat least from the institution of
slavery is a testament to tworealities number one, god's
(27:41):
partiality for liberatingoppressed people and number two,
our never letting go of theplow of freedom, even in our
darkest days in plantation life.
And it was not because of thosetwo factors factors we could
very much find ourselves in thesame institution that would
never have ended.
(28:03):
Speaking of regulating behavioras we move into the late 17th
18th century and we start seeingthe emergence of politics and
it becomes more and moreprominent in the life of the
colonies as we head into theRevolutionary War.
And in the United States ofAmerica, we're going to see the
(28:26):
establishment of slave slavecodes or laws created by our
discussion, because, of course,there's always been a concerted
effort, from the plantation evento the day, to control the
(28:47):
behavior of black people, tocontrol the behavior of
african-american people, to tellus where to live, to tell us
what to read, to tell us how weshould be educated, to tell us
how to dress, to tell us how tothink, particularly
theologically and religiously.
And so one of the reasons whythe black church was started was
(29:07):
so that the white church andwhite Christian ministers could
influence slave behavior andregulate slave behavior by using
religion, particular themeslike submission and obedience,
and the notion that when yousubmit to your slave master,
when you're obedient to yourslave master, you're also being
obedient to God as well.
(29:28):
And, of course, white imageswith Jesus were were touted,
particularly as we move into the19th century, and became more
and more prevalent as a way ofsuggesting subconsciously to the
slave that because Jesus iswhite and because your slave
hold is white, that thedrippings of divinity lie in the
(29:50):
very people who are enslavingyou.
And since you are non-white,you are further away from
divinity.
And so in order for you tobecome righteous and for you to
experience eternal life afterdeath, you need to be obedient
to the people in whose imageJesus is in that they very
wicked way of connecting divinereality with the context of
(30:14):
human bondage and blackdehumanization.
And so every effort was made totake power away from slaves and
the significant dimensions ofhuman existence, ie to make the
slave feel totally dependent onthe master.
And, of course, as I said inthe previous segment, they would
break brothers and sisters up,born siblings, blood siblings,
(30:37):
to destroy any sense of socialcohesion, because the
slaveholder wanted slaves to betotally dependent on him for the
necessities of life.
We see that mentality stillprevalent today.
Ultimately, relative toemployment, relative to
economics, relative to theultimate decisions that are
being made in the life of thecountry, in the world, they are
(31:00):
still being made mainly by whitemen, and they are being made
not only for white men, but theyare being made for everyone
else.
And so, in that sense, thefoundation of the slave codes
mentality, wise in many ways,still exists today.
Let's take a look at 10 ofthese codes, codes that I want
(31:23):
to bring to our attentiontonight.
Slaves could not leave numberone, the plantation, without
permission of the master orunless accompanied by a white
person.
We also saw this in SouthAfrica, with apartheid as well
that you could not go intoJohannesburg unless you had your
passbook or your passport, thatyou could not go into
Johannesburg unless you had yourpassbook or your passport One
(31:43):
of the things that NelsonMandela did before he was
arrested and sent to jail for 27years.
To protest the booklet that youneeded to get into Johannesburg
, he burned it in open square.
He set fire to it in opensquare, which only increased his
visibility to be in prison forpublicly flouting and taunting
(32:04):
the South African law relativeto black people.
And so you could not leave theplantation without permission of
a master or unless you wereaccompanied by a white person.
You usually used to have tohave a pass, particularly in
Virginia and Maryland.
Frederick Douglas talked abouthaving to have a pass to go into
(32:25):
town, and that's one of the.
That's one of the.
In fact, that ended up beingthe way in which he escaped.
He went into town and he wasable to slip away.
At that time, he had someonewith him.
He was able to slip away fromthem and move from slave to free
status.
(32:45):
Number two slaves could notgather on the plantation in
numbers larger than five Forobvious reasons because of the
lack of trust in slaves andbecause of the slave penchant to
want to run away from theplantation like anyone would.
In that context, slaveholdersdidn't allow slaves to gather in
(33:06):
numbers larger than five.
Even when the black church wasstarted, slaveholders would go
in as well as white ministersand sit in the back of the
church to make sure that slaveswere not plotting insurrection,
which was a risky propositionfor them to allow slaves to
gather in numbers larger thanfive.
But the slave code was thatslaves could not gather on the
(33:27):
plantation numbers larger thanfive.
Three slaves could not own aweapon of any kind for obvious
reasons, to be used ininsurrection, to use to kill the
mass.
And of course, when we, when wesee the insurrectionists come,
the insurrections happen becauseslaves are able to get a hold
(33:47):
of weapons and use them inbloody, violent insurrections.
We see that in the insurrectionof Nat Turner at Gabriel
Prosser and right down inCharleston with Denmark Vesey.
We even see in 1859, john Brown, a white minister who had led a
successful slave revolt inMissouri, break into the armory
in Harpers Ferry, virginia, andseize weapons and armed slaves
(34:12):
for insurrection in HarpersFerry Virginia.
And so we still have thatdebate today constitutionally in
America whether it's good toown a gun or not, and we see so
much gun violence today.
We see a different conversationtoday than the one then, but we
still have been a weapon crazyand a weapon conscience kind of
(34:35):
nation, and so weapons becamethe basis by which you either
defended what you had currentlycreated or whether you were
trying to destroy what you werebrought into.
If you were a slave Four, anyslave attempting to run away
received a death penalty.
Now this has to be put in itsproper context.
(34:56):
Even though it was a slave code, if you were able to capture a
runaway slave and get him backto the plantation, you didn't
want to kill him because youlost the labor.
So this slave code was enactedmore to scare slaves than
anything else.
Very seldom were slaves killedif they were captured after
(35:17):
running away.
But, more particularly, I callthis, you know, not another
slave code, but a correspondingslave code because it's in the
same area.
In our state of South Carolinain 1712, a runaway slave evading
capture for at least 20 daysthe first offense he was
(35:40):
publicly whipped.
If he evaded capture for 20days most of the time too, if
you could get away for 20 daysyou probably had a good chance
of making it to freedom,particularly when the
Underground Railroad comes alongin the 19th century, but at
this point it doesn't exist yet.
The second offense If youevaded capture for at least 20
(36:02):
days, you were branded with an Ron your right cheek.
There's another brand that wetalk about, and of course, the R
means runaway, and this wasdone quite frequently because it
involved a lot of pain for thebrand to be put on your face and
, at the same time, it couldsend a message without killing
(36:24):
you, and they could continue tobenefit from your labor.
The third offense your ear wascut off.
Yes, you heard me right, yourear was cut off.
Now, why your ear?
Namely because your ear can becut off in such a way by a
novice and you not bleed out,which would not necessarily be
the case if they cut your tongueout.
(36:44):
Sometimes they would cut yourtongue out and you would bleed
out.
They didn't want you to bleedout because they didn't want you
to die, and so they wanted youto stay alive, and so a lot of
times they would cut off the earand it would be excruciatingly
painful, as you might suspect,but at the same time, it would
not cause you to bleed out andbe bleed to death.
And, of course, the fourthoffense um, this also had to be
(37:07):
done without the slave manbleeding out, and he was
castrated.
Um, which is why it's thefourth offense, because you had
to be skilled at cutting them insuch a way and he scrolled them
so that he wouldn't bleed out.
Most of the time he would, andso that's why this is the fourth
offense for a runaway slaveevading capture for at least 20
(37:29):
days.
And so you can see that thebattle lines are clearly drawn,
the gauntlet is thrown down, and, of course, they try to do
everything they can to imposeexcruciating pain on the slave,
while at the same time trying tokeep them alive so that they
can continue to exploit theirlabor.
Five no slave could work for pay.
(37:49):
Of course, we continue to havean economic crisis in America
that's growing even widerbetween the haves and the
have-nots.
Even in a Christian nation thatis supposed to be concerned
primarily with transforming theconditions of the poor, we seem
to be headed in the oppositedirection than that.
And so slaves could not workfor pay, obviously so that you
(38:10):
couldn't develop any type ofwealth or material base in order
for you to form an insurrectionbut even further than that, to
lay the foundation for you tobuild communities, which we saw
post-slavery.
To lay the foundation for youto build communities which we
saw post slavery, that we saw inWilmington, that we saw in
Chicago, that we saw inGreenwood in Oklahoma.
(38:32):
And so we see thesedevelopments of African American
money moving around in thecommunity through different
merchants, post slavery.
And the fear even then was thatif you gave slaves money that
they may use it for theirbenefit, not to remain slaves.
Although there were some slavesthat ignored slaveholders, that
(38:53):
ignored this particular umslave code and paid some of
their slaves and their slavesbrought their freedom.
David Walker purchased hisfreedom.
A number of other slavespurchased their freedom because
they saved every penny that theywere given by their slaveholder
and, of course, once theslaveholder had gotten set the
(39:22):
price for what he paid for andfor and they paid the slave
master that amount Someslaveholders would free slaves.
This would eventually thiswould certainly be the case as
we move into the 19th century.
Still here in the 18th century,most slaves, if not all,
receive no pay for their work.
Six, no slave could marry.
Of course, that will allow youto establish meaning and
(39:44):
propositiveness in the life ofyour community relative to
establishing families.
Social cohesion was a big issueamong slave masters.
They did not want slaves todevelop social cohesion.
They did allow slaves to have aceremony and of course it's
famously known as jumping thebroom, and this is an adaptation
from an African culturalexpression wherein the wife of a
(40:10):
newlywed couple would take abroom and sweep out the front
porch of their house and thesidewalk in front of the house
as a means of not allowing evilwizards to come in and destroy
the life they were trying tobuild as a family.
So you can see, even in Africa,family life was very big for
African people, and so we seethat adaptation even today, as
(40:33):
we can now have ceremonies andsome couples have
conscientiously put the broomjumping ceremony into their
wedding.
Whether it's during the serviceat the church or whether it's
during their reception at thetown hall.
We still see the broom jumpingritual and remembrance of our
(40:55):
ancestors whose marriages werenot recognized, but they could
broom jump Seven.
No slave could have a birthcertificate, namely because it
humanizes you, and so mostslaves, and even post-slavery we
, couldn't have a birthcertificate.
In fact that's a relatively newphenomenon for
African-Americans.
(41:15):
Even as late as the 1960s,african-americans didn't get
birth certificates.
Midwives delivered black kidsand the midwife would write it
down on a piece of paper thedate and the year and the time,
and of course, they would foldthat paper up and put it in that
big Bible that we had in ourcoffee tables in our homes as
African Americans um, um,because you couldn't have an
(41:39):
official birth certificate.
So that's how we knew what ourage was and our birthday was
when the midwife delivered us.
And so the very simple reasonwhy this is the case is because
white people could have a birthcertificate, and so you're
starting to see any type ofcoalescing as being anathema to
(42:02):
the white community, that theywanted to be able to separate
themselves from black people interms of what makes one
fundamentally human.
And, of course, denyingmarriage on the one hand,
denying birth certificate, areways in which you draw that
sharp distinction between yoursuperiority as a white community
and black people's inferiority.
(42:27):
Eight as chattel, slave womencould not refuse sex from a
white man.
As I said earlier, there was nosuch thing as rape, even though
it was rape, as black women didnot want to have sex with their
slaveholders.
We do see some slave womenusing that as a basis socially
to try to derive favors from theslave master.
(42:50):
We saw that, of course,prominently with Thomas
Jefferson and Sally Hemings, buteven Sally Hemings' mother had
a relationship with theslaveholder and created a
relationship with thatslaveholder, with the you
knowholder, with the hope thatit could derive some type of
humanizing gesture from theslave master as a result of it.
(43:11):
One of the things, ironically,that Thomas Jefferson promised
Sally Hemings is that he wouldnot sell the slaves to another
plantation, even as he hit acutefinancial crisis, namely
because the slaves that livedtogether with each other for so
long they didn't want to bebroken up.
And so, even though Jeffersondied, a broke man, monticello,
sally Hemings was able to getthat promise from him.
(43:32):
Yet at the same time, she saidto him when he tried to rape her
the first time they had sex,she said to him you don't have
to do that, you own me.
And so, in that sense, a slavewoman could not refuse sex from
a white man.
Slave men nine could not becircumcised.
Again, it distinguishes youfrom white men who could be
circumcised, and so my PSA toyou is that, for young men who
(43:56):
are not circumcised.
Please get circumcised Mothers.
Please make sure your sons getcircumcised, particularly as
they grow older, as they producechildren and as they become
sexually active and they need tobe circumcised.
And so?
But at the time, slave mencould not be circumcised Again.
(44:18):
This is a new phenomenon, likethe birth certificate.
Even into the 1930s, 40s, 50s,black men were not getting
circumcised because many of themwere born at home and when they
were born to the midwife, theydidn't get circumcised.
And so please make sure that wedo this for men.
But of course, white men couldget circumcised, not black men.
(44:39):
And so yet another distinctionbetween black and white humanity
.
And, of course, the 10th one,which is very significant for me
as an educator and as the sonof two educators, both my mother
and father no slave could learnto read or write.
The penalty was death if youwere caught teaching a slave to
(45:00):
read and write.
And of course, it was FrederickDouglass who said that
knowledge makes a man unfit tobe a slave to read and write.
And of course it was FrederickDouglass who said that knowledge
makes a man unfit to be a slave.
And so, as Frederick Douglassgrew and other blacks who could
read grew, the fear fromslaveholders and white Christian
ministers.
White politicians well foundthat if they learn how to read,
they're going to write books andwrite speeches condemning
(45:22):
slavery.
And that's exactly what theydid and then taught others how
to read and to write as well.
We see this with FrederickDouglass in his book, of course,
narrative of the life ofFrederick Douglass and my
bondage, my freedom.
We see this with Harriet Jacobsincidents in the life of a
slave girl.
And, of course, we see thiswith David Walker's appeal to
the colored citizens of America,one of the most highly
(45:44):
significant and incendiarydocuments in the history of this
country and the past halfmillennium.
And so this is why my PSA alwaysis to my students read
something every day.
And if you can write somethingevery day, there was a time when
we could not do this and writesomething every day.
There was a time when we couldnot do this.
And of course, you need tomaximize your opportunity now to
(46:08):
become as educated as youpossibly can, both formally and
informally, and never take forgranted the ability to be able
to read and the ability to beable to write, because the pen,
in many cases, in the onwardmarch of human civilization and
human development is mightierthan the sword and that you can
(46:29):
transform world historicalsituations with your pen and
with your tongue quicker thanyou can with a tank, with a
machete or with a sword.
And so we have seen this in ourhistory as well, and we've seen
it with Malcolm X, we've seenit with Martin Luther King,
we've seen it with WB Du Bois,we've seen it with Ida B Wells
(46:49):
Barnett People who could writeit, people who could say it and
transformed black existence andmade this world look at black
people as human beings, and tosee black Americans at the
vanguard of forwarding changefor oppressed people, not only
in America but throughout theworld, in China, in South Africa
(47:10):
, in India, taking their cuefrom African-American people who
learn how to read and write anduse that knowledge to be able
to craft speeches and to be ableto craft literary works that
shook up the world, as they say,relative to the notion of
bondage and the relationship ofhuman bondage to a God that
(47:34):
liberates God's people, thatdoes not condone bondage and is
partial, and take sides againstthe poor, the marginalized, the
vilified and the demonized inworld events and world
historical affairs.
And so learn how to read andwrite, continue to learn how to
(47:56):
read and write.
Don't ever take this forgranted, because someone died
for your ability to be able toread and write and didn't even
know your name.
And so that concludes segmenttwo strange and hostile land.
In segment three, as I touchedon it a little bit even just now
(48:19):
, I'm talking about the Godthat's partial in situations of
oppression.
We're going to take a look at alecture referred to as the
coming of the gods, and we'regoing to see, as we move into
the late 18th, into the early19th century, two different
theologies emerging inplantation life, publicly One,
of course, slave holdingtheology, which equated biblical
(48:42):
revelation and Christian faithwith African slavery.
But on the other hand, you'regoing to see a different type of
theology emerge for Africans asthey begin to lay the
foundation themselves, as theybegin to read the Bible more,
grow in Christianity more, andthey are going to be able to see
a different biblical story andthey are going to be able to
(49:04):
convey that to their story andthey're going to be able to to
convey that to their people andto the world.
And so we'll look at that nextsegment.
It's titled the coming of thegods.
Thank you for listening to thissegment.
Again, I hope it wasenlightening and informative and
I'll see you again next segment.
Thank you very much for joiningus and have a good night.
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Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
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